Night games would turn sparcely filled stands into packed ones in the future, rallying the community around the school, Hoover officials say.
/ Nelvin C. Cepeda / Union-Tribune

Early in the fourth quarter Friday afternoon, you could gaze through the east end zone of Hoover High's football field and see a majestic rainbow arching over the flag pole and nearby eucalyptus trees.

The Hoover players and coaches wished they couldn't see it.

Not because they aren't partial to rainbows or because rainbows represent some sort of bad omen, but because you can't see them at night.

Herbert Hoover High opened in 1930, and through the '50s, '60s and '70s it played football under Friday night lights. Then the field was reconfigured from north-south to east-west as part of a schoolwide renovation. Then came the edict barring night games at inner-city schools following a spate of gang-related incidents.

Patrick Henry High didn't have lights and wanted them. Hoover had them and didn't need them, and in the mid-1980s graciously shipped them across Interstate 8.

Now Hoover wants lights again.

“It's the magic of the night game,” said Andy Trakas, Hoover's vice principal who oversees athletics. “This wouldn't be happening in Texas.”

It may or may not be happening in City Heights, depending on the results of an environmental impact report due this month and the efforts of residents whose houses tightly ring the school. Other city high schools without lights reportedly are in line for them as well, and Hoover could be an intriguing test case.

The school says the area residents bought their homes knowing they were across the street from a football field. The residents say they bought their homes knowing they were across the street from a football field without lights.

“It's not what came first, the community or the school,” said Ron Anderson, who has helped mobilize residents of the 200-home area known as Baja Talmadge. “They were both built at the same time.”

The issue has been debated for more than a year, sometimes rationally, sometimes more contentiously — at community forums, at overflow school district meetings, at school rallies, through Councilman Todd Gloria, on the Internet, even on Facebook. The lights are part of a larger overhaul of Hoover's classroom and athletic facilities funded by Prop. S, most of which the residents have no problem with.

The major gripe is the lights, and the accompanying vehicle and human traffic in a neighborhood with already scarce parking. A few hundred people were scattered through the stands Friday afternoon to watch the Cardinals. What happens when the 4,000-seat stadium is packed?

“No one has any issues with the students or the school,” said Anderson, who played football at a Washington state high school that had lights. “It's the people who come to these events who are unruly and basically (trash) our neighborhood because there's simply no parking.

“The school is having a hard time handling daytime events. How are they going to be able to handle nighttime events?”